The audacious plan to end hunger with 3-D printed food and there will be pizza on Mars

According to Quartz, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer.

Anjan Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more important—use for the technology.

He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.

... Contractor's initial grant from NASA, under its Small Business Innovation Research program, is for a system that can print food for astronauts on very long space missions. For example, all the way to Mars.

... Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.

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Feeding the Final Frontier: 3-D Printers Could Make Astronaut Meals

Sooner than you think, 3-D printed designer meals may be coming to a rocketship, or a restaurant, near you. Wired reports.

Right now, astronauts on the space station are eating the same seven days of food on rotations of two or three weeks,” said astronautical engineer Michelle Terfansky, who studied the potential and challenges of making 3-D printed food in space for a master’s thesis at the University of Southern California. “It gets the job done, but it’s not exactly home cooking.”

The Fab@Home team at Cornell University has developed gel-like substances called hydrocolloids that can be extruded and built up into different shapes. By mixing in flavoring agents, they can produce a range of tastes and textures.

The ability to 3-D print meals could be particularly handy on long-duration space missions, said Terfansky.

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Fab Cafe in Tokyo Preps Sweet 3D Chocolate Printing Workshop in Time for Valentine’s Day

Because on Valentine’s Day in Japan it is customary for women to give chocolate to men, Fab Cafe Tokoy is planning on holding a series of workshops for women before February 14, where they can learn to make 3D chocolates modeled from their own face using a 3D printer and scanner.

[via TechInAsia]

Related article in The Guardian.

First lab-grown hamburger to cost $395,000

Researchers are focusing their efforts on a more efficient (and less costly) way of producing artificial meat. We shouldn't be expecting it in our supermarkets for another 15 to 20 years.

Watch the video below on artificial meat at If Conference in London, courtesy of 3Ders.Org.

Related:

-- Andras Forgacs, CEO of Modern Medow answers questions about 3D printed meat on Reddit. "What is the input , what is the output ? Explain like I am five, for 1 kg of meat , what is needed ?"

-- A very thorough article from the BBC on US start-up Modern Meadow, which believes it can make artificial raw meat using a 3D bioprinter.

3D printing food at home in 15 years using 'alternate ingredients: grass, insects, duckweed, beat leafs...

In a Twitter interview #AskFuturist today, followedby1d asked: "When will we be able to download food from the internet?" 3ders.org reports.

Cisco futurist Dave Evans said:"Not food, but the recipes to print food. Roughly 15 year horizon, but prototypes now." Evans predicted that in 15 years we will be able to "print" food.

In the video above, "3D Printing: now printing food too" made by TNO Research, are listed alternate ingredients to print 3D food: grass, algae, lupine seeds, insects, duckweed and beat leafs. Food can be made into new shapes, new structures, new textures and new flavors.

Really, that's what we'll be eating in 15 years?

Video: 3D Printing Chocolate

Watch video of a chocolate 3D printer in action. [via 3D Printing Industry]

3D printed vegan Kosher Moebius bacon

After 3D printed meat and chocolate, Cory Doctorow reports on 3D bacon on boingboing.

Finally it is possible, infinite 3D printed bacon from Shapeways 3D printers with the Bacon Mobius Strip that is not delicious but also vegan and kosher friendly.

Watch video.

Cornell's New 3-D Printer Lets You Print Food in Any Shape and Texture

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab has invented a 3-D printer that not only allows you to print food, but lets you create almost any design imaginable with your favorite ingredients. inhabitat reports.

Working with experts from the French Culinary Institute, Cornell’s new technology may soon be available for chefs and home use, allowing enterprising cooks to customize new and interesting dishes with healthier ingredients

We’ve seen a similar concept designed by a pair of students at MIT, but this ready made design takes things to a whole new level.

Cornell Scientists Print The Future Of Food

Articles on 3D printing of food:

-- 3D printed meat: It's what's for dinner - Cnet.

Peter Thiel's philanthropic foundation gives up to $350,000 to a company named Modern Meadow, which plans to use 3D bioprinting to create an "edible prototype" that's a meat replacement.

-- MIT's food printer - Make:

Cornucopia: Digital Gastronomy is a project by two grad students working in MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group. The goal: a consumer-friendly machine that prints food.

Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

-- The printed future of Christmas dinner - BBC.

The team at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL) are building a 3D food printer, as part of the bigger Fab@Home project, which they hope one day will be as commonplace as the microwave oven or blender.

Just pop the raw food "inks" in the top, load the recipe - or 'FabApp' - and the machine would do the rest.

... People lacking even basic culinary skills could download the recipe files of master chefs or print out nutrition-packed dishes recommended by their doctors.

Chefs could also create new foodstuffs and customizable menus for fussy customers.

-- PayPal Founder Backs Synthetic Meat Printing Company - Wired.

The Thiel Foundation has made a six-figure grant to a series of biotechnology startups, including a company that wants to 3-D-print meat.

The company claims that by carefully layering mixtures of cells of different types in a specific structure, in-vitro meat production becomes feasible. It’s set a short-term goal of printing a sliver of meat around two centimeters by one centimeter, and less than half a millimeter thick, which is edible.

The Delicious Future: 3D Chocolate Printer Finally Available for Purchase

The concept of this 3D chocolate printer is not new. What is new is that this whimsical 3D chocolate printer from the masterminds at Choc Edge has finally become available to the masses. TIME Techland reports.

TIME Techland wrote about it last year, and even linked to “edible chocolate structures” created as far back as 2007. If you can print plastic-like 3D objects, why not print 3D food objects? The technology isn’t quite advanced enough to easily create things from complex materials, but it can be used with simple foodstuffs like chocolate.

What is new is that this whimsical 3D chocolate printer from the masterminds at Choc Edge has finally become available to the masses. The Choc Creator Version 1, as it’s called, isn’t exactly cheap – 3D printing in general is still a bit on the expensive side – but can pre-order a unit for £2,488 (about $3,500) if you’re one of the first 90 people to do so.

Read more.

Related: - World's first chocolate printer [Youtube video]